Sunday, May 15, 2016

22 Reasons Principled Conservatives can
Never Vote for Donald Trump. By Robert A. Hall

(And Hillary is just
as bad, though it's a toss up which will be worse for the country.)

Feel free to forward or post.

I'm a lifelong Republican. I was a volunteer for Nixon at
14, and for Goldwater at 18 before joining the Marines
in August, 1964 and headed to Vietnam. In 1968, I was a college
student and supported Nixon. In 1972, I graduated from College in June and was
elected to the Massachusetts Senate in November, defeating a Democrat incumbent
by nine votes out of 60,000 in a 4-1 Democrat district, last won by a
Republican in 1938. I was reelected four times, even being nominated by both
parties in 1976. In 1982, I was the Republican whip when I decided to retire
undefeated. I have campaigned for many Republicans since. I have never voted
for a Democrat for President. I will not vote for a life-long liberal this
year, not Hillary, not Bernie, and certainly not Trump.

The Donaldcrats say that by not voting for Trump, I am
handing the election to Hillary Clinton (or, long shot Bernie Sanders). It is
not #NeverTrump that is handing the White House to Hillary. When he dropped
out, Rubio was leading Clinton
by 5%, while Trump was trailing her by 11%. Before the Indiana Primary, Kasich
was leading Clinton,
Cruz was trailing her in the polls by 2.9% and Trump was trailing her by 11.2%.
It is not principled conservatives who cannot ever vote for a know-nothing
blowhard with a meretricious character and no firm principles except
self-aggrandizement and self enrichment, whose every statement and promise,
like Obama's, comes with an expiration date, who are "handing the election
to Hillary." It is the Donaldcrats who voted to make this life-long
liberal with a bias for big government, an aversion to transparency, a contempt
for the truth and a past record of shady dealings the GOP nominee who have
handed the election to Hillary. (Trump's promises, like the now-discarded
promise to self-fund, have the self-life of unrefrigerated milk.)

I believe the numerous references in this essay prove that
Donald Trump has only two core values, and anything else can and will be
discarded in service to them. They are self-aggrandizement and self-enrichment.

I don't expect to change any minds. A retired Marine on my
list stated truthfully. "Trump supporters do not care about any
detractors. Not one." Exactly. They are exactly like the Obama supporters
in 2008 and 2012. They don't care how many times his lies are exposed, how many
times he changes his positions, how many promises he breaks. To the Obots,
Obama is the godhead. To the Donaldcrats, Trump is. He could come out for
disbanding the military, making abortion mandatory, and an 80% flat tax, and
they would still be voting for him.

But I felt compelled for the record to lay out the reasons,
based on his own actions and
statements, as to why I have held Donald Trump in disdain and contempt as long
as I have known anything about him, and why I would never vote for him for Town
Board, never mind President. Though this is long, Trump supporters, especially
Republicans reluctantly getting into bed with Trump for party unity, should
read it in order to be prepared for the bombshells the media and the Democrats
will throw at him. Every Trump supporter will be branded as supporting all of all
he items below, forever. The Trump campaign, and even more so if there is a
Trump Presidency, will be the graveyard of reputations.

1. Donald Trump is an apple that didn't
fall far from the tree. The family fortune was started in a whorehouse.

Excerpt: That April, Ivana began to tell her friends that
she was worried about Donald’s state of mind. She had been completely
humiliated by Donald through his public association with Marla Maples. “How can you say you love us? You don’t
love us! You don’t even love yourself. You just love your money,”
twelve-year-old Donald junior told his father, according to friends of Ivana’s.
“What kind of son have I created?” Trump’s mother, Mary, is said to have asked
Ivana. However unlikely it seemed, Ivana was now considered a tabloid
heroine, and her popularity seemed in inverse proportion to the fickle city’s
new dislike of her husband. “Ivana is now a media goddess on par with Princess
Di, Madonna, and Elizabeth Taylor,” Liz Smith reported. Months earlier, Ivana
had undergone cosmetic reconstruction with a California doctor. She emerged
unrecognizable to her friends and perhaps her children, as fresh and innocent
of face as Heidi of Edelweiss Farms. Although she had negotiated four separate
marital-property agreements over the last fourteen years, she was suing her
husband for half his assets. Trump was trying to be philosophical. “When a man leaves a woman, especially when
it was perceived that he has left for a piece of ass—a good one!—there are 50
percent of the population who will love the woman who was left,” he told me.

And it was rumored
that he cheated on Marla with his Third wife, Melania: Donald Trump's Early
Life and Wives Ivana, Marla & Melania

Excerpt: Many believe that Trump's third wife, Melania, is
nothing more than an extension of Donald's ego. Melania was born in Slovenia as
Melanija Knavs, and is a former model known for having more than her fair share
of plastic surgery. People have also speculated that Donald was probably still
married to Marla when he began seeing Melania, as it is known that they met and
began dating in the late 1990s. As soon as he divorced Marla, Donald began
promoting Melania's modeling career and taking her on television shows with him,
which resulted in many modeling offers for her. The couple married in 2005, and
the wedding received extravagant press coverage as the event seemed to be
attempting to recapture the glory and expense of Donald Trump's first marriage
to Ivana. Melania has some formal education but does not seem very interested
in applying her talents, unlike Ivana.

Excerpt: Trump has a history of making crude remarks toward
women. He reportedly said of his ex-wife Marla Maples, “Nice tits, no brains,”
and more recently, he has called Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly a “bimbo” and a
“lightweight” and said she had “blood coming out of her wherever” during the
first GOP debate.

Excerpt; Donald Trump told shock jock he felt 'lucky' not to
have picked up an STD. He said having sex in the 1980s was 'dangerous' and
'scary, like Vietnam.' 'It
is my personal Vietnam.
I feel like a great and very brave soldier,' he said. Stern said Trump compared
a vagina to 'a potential landmine' in private. Trump avoided military draft age
22, because of bone spurs in both heels. Republican front-runner revealed he's
'not into anal' on Stern show in 2004. He also discussed Melania and Ivanka
Trump's toilet habits in bizarre chat.

Donald Trump is the
Mussolini of America
with double the vulgarity. Republicans are right to fear demagoguery of the one
candidate who makes Hillary Clinton look electable

The Pinocchio Test: Trump should think twice before
challenging the research of a major news organization. There is ample evidence
for each of the slurs against women uttered or tweeted by Trump. Perhaps he has
a point that he attacks once he is provoked, but there is little doubt that the
over-the-top language cited by Kelly was correct. Four Pinocchios.

Excerpt: Following Donald Trump's appearance last week at
the Family Leadership Summit in Iowa,
CNN's Anderson Cooper sought out clarification on Trump's assertion that he's
unsure if he ever asks God's forgiveness. ... When further asked about
repentance again by Cooper, Trump said "I think repenting is
terrific." "Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am
not making mistakes?" asked Trump. "I work hard, I'm an honorable
person." In talking about his Iowa
appearance, Trump said, "We were having fun when I said I drink the wine,
I eat the cracker, the whole room was laughing."

Excerpt: In June 2009, Richard and Shelly Hewson paid the
Trump Entrepreneur Initiative, an educational venture owned by businessman and
now–presidential candidate Donald Trump, $21,490 for classes that promised to
teach them how to flip homes for profit. They ponied up the high price “because
we had faith in Donald Trump,” Richard wrote in a January 2015 affidavit. “We
thought that if this was his program, we would be learning to do real estate
deals from his people who knew his techniques.”

Excerpt: Joseph Cinque, the academy’s president and CEO,
personally presented the award to Trump in Scotland. It was one of many
similar honors Cinque has bestowed upon him in the past decade. Cinque, who has
been described by the academy as one of Trump’s “dear friends,” is also a
convicted felon who reportedly survived a murder attempt, was associated with
the infamous mob boss John Gotti and went on to earn the nicknames “Joey No
Socks” and “the Preppy Don.” Trump recently held one of the top three slots on
the organization’s board of trustees, with the ostentatious title of
“Ambassador Extraordinaire.” Members of Trump’s family and multiple executives
at his company, the Trump Organization, have also sat on the academy’s board of
trustees, which selects award winners. Cinque runs the academy out of his
apartment on Central Park South in Manhattan,
just blocks from TrumpTower. In a conversation
with Yahoo News on Thursday morning, Trump denied he had any involvement with
the ratings group, which has bestowed numerous five- and six-star ratings on
his properties.

Excerpt: As David Cay Johnston, the Pulitzer
Prize-winning reporter who won the award for reporting on the American tax
system, has detailed, Donald Trump has had strong ties to organized crime,
building his famous TrumpTowers and TrumpPlaza apartment building with the help
of mafia kingpins Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno
and Paul Castellano. A federal investigation found a federal
investigation showed the TrumpPlaza apartment
building’s construction was aided by racketeering.

We Investigated,
Donald Trump is Named in at Least 169 Federal Lawsuits

Excerpt: The Trump camp's screening skills are important as
the presumptive Republican presidential nominee turns to selecting a running
mate. They would only become more crucial if he won the White House. Then,
Trump would have to name more than 3,600 political appointees to senior
government positions, including critical jobs overseeing national security and
the economy. In the Azerbaijani case, Garten said the Trump Organization had
performed meticulous due diligence on the company's partners, but hadn't
researched the allegations against the Baku
partner's father because he wasn't a party to the deal. "I've never heard
that before," Garten said, when first asked about allegations of Iranian
money laundering by the partner's father, which appeared in U.S. diplomatic
cables widely available since they were leaked in 2010. Garten subsequently
said he was confident the minister alleged to be laundering Iranian funds, Ziya
Mammadov, had no involvement in his son's holding company, even though some of
the son's major businesses regularly partnered with the transportation ministry
and were founded while the son was in college overseas. Ziya Mammadov did not
respond to a telephone message the AP left with his ministry in Baku or to emails to the Azerbaijan Embassy in Washington.

Excerpt: But for those generals who oppose Trump–or anyone
who opposes Trump–beware the enemies list. President Trump will cultivate an
enemies list like Green Giant plants peas: Lovingly, efficiently, with care and
precision. A huge field of peas, erm, enemies. Cross him, and you immediately
find yourself planted in it. And for those who find themselves there, having
been previously in the coward or pimp lane, it will suck. Trump will classify
his enemies with endless taxonomies, constantly keeping track of who is dangerous,
who is to be bribed, and who can be exploited. He’ll assign nicknames to the
most notable among them. We’ll think “Lyin’ Ted” and “Crooked Hillary” are
quaint pet names compared to what he’ll do with his true enemies as president.
And if we think that President Obama’s use of lawfare, the power of the
administrative state, and his pen and phone are terrifying, we ain’t seen
nothing yet when Trump is president.

Excerpt: Donald J. Trump, who received
draft deferments through much of the Vietnam War, told the author of a coming
biography that he nevertheless “always felt that I was in the military” because
of his education at a military-themed boarding school.

Mr. Trump said his experience at the New YorkMilitaryAcademy, an expensive
prep school where his parents had sent him to correct poor behavior, gave him
“more training militarily than a lot of the guys that go into the military.” That
claim may raise eyebrows given that Mr. Trump, now a Republican presidential
candidate, never served in the military and mocked Senator John McCain of Arizona, a decorated naval aviator, for his
captivity of several years during the Vietnam War. “He’s not a war hero,” Mr.
Trump said in July. “He’s a war hero because he was captured. I like people
that weren’t captured.”

Trump is, 'Invincible
in Peace, Invisible in War," as Sen. George Hill of Georgia described
shirkers after the Civil War. He talks fight, but used deferments to avoid military
service.

Excerpt: The 2-S classifications are Trump’s student
deferments. The first two covered his time at FordhamUniversity in the Bronx, and the
second two allowed him to stay in school when he transferred to study business
at the University
of Pennsylvania. At the
time, as Tigar wrote in his 1969 article, any college student who asked could
get a student deferment. When he graduated in 1968, Trump’s classification
shifted to 1-A, or "available for service." Had that stood, Trump
would have been drafted. But Trump had a physical exam in September 1968. He
had taken one less than two years earlier that did not disqualify him for
service as we can tell from his 1-A classification in July 1968. However, his
second physical was followed in October with a new classification, 1-Y. That
designation put him near the bottom of any call-up list. It meant he would only
be drafted if there were a national emergency. (Trump and I are the same age.
But I volunteered for the Marines and volunteered for Vietnam when my outfit was scheduled for a
six-month cruise of the Caribbean.)

Excerpt: Many of the veterans who called the
hotline—855-VETS-352—say they were sent to an automated voicemail message
telling them to email the campaign. Those who reached a live human were
similarly instructed to send an email, or to mail their medical records to
campaign headquarters at TrumpTower. It soon became evident
that Trump had no actual plan in place to help anyone who contacted him through
the hotline. Calling it a “publicity stunt,” one veteran wrote on
PopularMilitary.com, “We are not sure what the estimated wait time is, but it
is probably safe to say you should hold on to your [Veterans Affairs] card for
now.” This perfunctory effort was perhaps to be expected, since Trump has a
long and colorful history of showing disrespect toward men and women in
uniform. He did not serve himself, avoiding the Vietnam War via four education
deferments, followed by a medical deferment for bone spurs in his feet. (His
campaign notes that Trump received a high number in the draft lottery and was
unlikely to ever be called up.) But on numerous occasions, he has dismissed the
experiences of those who did.

Four months after
fundraiser, Trump says he gave $1 million to veterans group

Excerpt: As recently as last week, Trump’s campaign manager
had insisted that the mogul had already given that money away. But that was
false: Trump had not. In recent days, The Washington Post and other media
outlets had pressed Trump and his campaign for details about how much the
fundraiser had actually raised and whether Trump had given his portion. The
candidate refused to provide details.

5. In fact, running for President is the
first time Trump has expressed any desire to serve his country.

A former staffer
claims the Trump campaign was a protest. Others say it was to enhance the Trump
brand: An Open Letter to Trump Voters from His Top Strategist-Turned-Defector

Excerpt: Even Trump's most trusted advisors didn't expect
him to fare this well. Almost a year ago, recruited for my public relations and
public policy expertise, I sat in TrumpTower being told that the
goal was to get The Donald to poll in double digits and come in second in
delegate count. That was it. The Trump camp would have been satisfied to see
him polling at 12% and taking second place to a candidate who might hold
50%. His candidacy was a protest candidacy.

Excerpt: Real estate mogul Donald Trump has informed the Federal Election Commission, as
required of presidential candidates, that he is worth more than $10 billion. It
appears what his campaign is largely about is embellishing his name and brand,
not only for fame, but for profit as well. ... Exhibit A is a Post story about
the Trump International Golf Club in Puerto Rico.
Although the club has filed for bankruptcy, the story says, Mr. Trump "put
no money down but took a cut in the annual revenue" without risking any of
his own capital. One of his sons, Eric, an executive in the Trump Organization,
is quoted: "We made many millions of dollars on it but never invested a
dime."

6. Trump is a know-nothing, with no firm
position on anything, except that Trump is great and should be President

Excerpt: “I went to an Ivy League school. I’m very
highly educated. I know words. I have the best words,” says Trump
in the beginning of the ad. It then cuts to a montage of Donald Trump
using various profanities in his public speeches, and is censored
appropriately, of course.

Trump: When I get to Washington, I’m Going to
Become Part of the Establishment so I can Make Deals With Democrats (VIDEO)

Excerpt: While most presidential candidates craft detailed platforms
and spend years trying to sell them to voters, GOP front-runner Donald Trump
sometimes takes up two or three contradictory policy positions in the same week
— or even the same interview.

Excerpt: The
GOP front-runner is wildly uninformed when it comes to foreign policy. ...
Donald Trump's inconsistency on foreign policy has the Washington punditry in a tizzy. ...
Sadly, a major reason for this is that the American public is
as ignorant about foreign policy as Donald Trump.

Excerpt: What, they ask, could go
so wrong in a Trump presidency? Here, then, is an attempt to realistically
assess what a Trump presidency would look like. My biases are clear up front: I
don’t trust Trump. I don’t trust his promises, because he has shown no willingness
to hold to them. I don’t trust his ideology, because he proclaims that his
guiding star is his own self-assurance. I trust Trump to be Trump: a man of
convenience, a thinker of no great depth, a reactionary with no constitutional
understanding and a willingness to maximize executive power.

Excerpt: A pattern emerges. Donald
Trump is a habitual liar, and the thing about habitual liars is that they lie
habitually. In a testy exchange with former Florida governor Jeb Bush, Trump insisted
that he’d never gone bankrupt, and that claims to the contrary are a lie.
That’s the Trump magic right there: Lying about your business history is one
thing, lying that your critics are lying about it is another. Trump has a
peculiar way of speaking about bankruptcy: He has a deep aversion to the word
itself. He speaks of “putting a company into a chapter” without ever answering
the implicit question: “Chapter of what? Moby-Dick?” The answer, of course, is
the U.S. Bankruptcy Code, to which Trump has taken recourse at least four times
over the course of his business career.

Excerpt: Fueled by a slew of bank loans in the late 1980s,
Trump absorbed an airline, a football team, a landmark hotel, a bunch of
casinos, a yacht, and other nifty stuff -- almost all of which he eventually
lost because he couldn’t juggle the debt payments. He overcame those setbacks,
but the man who emerged from that mess wasn’t really a dealmaker anymore. Kept
afloat by his wealthy father’s funds and his own gifts for self-promotion,
Trump became a reality TV star, golf course developer and human shingle who
licensed his name on everything from real estate and vodka to mattresses and
underwear.

Trump Worth $10
Billion Less Than If He’d Simply Invested in Index Funds

Excerpt: From mid-1995 to early 2009, Trump served as
chairman of Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts (renamed Trump Entertainment
Resorts in 2004), and held the CEO title for five years (mid-2000 to mid-2005).
During Trump’s 13 years as chairman, the casino empire lost a total of $1.1 billion,
twice declared bankruptcy, and wrote down or restructured $1.8 billion in debt.
Over the same period, the company paid Trump—essentially Trump paying
himself—roughly $82 million by Fortune’s estimates, collected from a
dizzying variety of sources spelled out in the company’s proxy filings, as
varied as payments for use of Trump’s private plane to fees paid directly Trump
for access to his name and marketing expertise.

Excerpt: Over the last 48 hours, the latest attempts to
derail Donald Trump’s candidacy have focused on the presumptive nominee’s tax
returns — more specifically, what is or isn’t in them. On Tuesday night, Trump told the Associated Press he would not release
the returns prior to November because he is currently under audit by the IRS, a
180 reversal from his position on the matter back in January, when he said
he would be releasing his returns. However, 24 hours later, he characteristically
changed course after being criticized on the matter by Mitt Romney. “I’ll
release,” he told Fox News’ Greta Van Susteren. “Hopefully before the election I’ll
release. And I’d like to release.”

Excerpt: Yet missing from Trump’s retelling is that all four
bankruptcies were high-profile embarrassments for his name-brand American
empire. Amid some of the proceedings, the mogul poured in millions of dollars
from his personal fortune to keep the restructurings alive. To secure better
deals or more time to pay off debts, Trump forfeited lucrative ownership stakes
and allowed bankers, lawyers and bondholders to feast on his empire. In one
deal involving hundreds of millions of dollars in debts he had personally
guaranteed, he agreed to sell his airline and mega-yacht, and he allowed
bankers to stipulate how much he could spend every month.

Bills went unpaid. They turned off the electricity. Our
paychecks started bouncing. I got cancer and they canceled my health coverage.
Here’s what it was like to work for Donald Trump’s failed magazine.

Excerpt: TRUMP: Hillary Clinton, I think, is a
terrific woman. I mean, I'm a little biased because I've known her for
years. I live in New York.
She lives in New York.
And I've known her and her husband for years and I really like 'em both a lot
and I think she really works hard and I think she, again, she's given an agenda
that's not all of her, but I think she really works hard, and I think she does
a good job. And I like her. VAN SUSTEREN: She says she's out at the
end of this term. Do you think we're gonna see her again running for office? TRUMP:
I think so. I think, you know, assuming she's healthy, which I hope she
will be, I think she probably runs after the next four years, I would imagine. VAN
SUSTEREN: You support her? TRUMP: I don't want to get into this
because I'll get myself into trouble -- VAN SUSTEREN: That's why I asked
you, to see what kind of trouble. TRUMP: I just like her. I like
her, and I like her husband. Her husband made a speech on Monday at
Mar-a-Lago, and it was very well received. And he's a -- he's a really good guy, and she's a really good person
and woman.

Excerpt: Back in 2007, Trump praised Hillary Clinton among
the presidential candidates then as someone who could make a good deal with Iran.
"Hillary's always surrounded herself with very good people," Trump
told CNN's Wolf Blitzer in 2007. "I think Hillary would do a good
job."

Excerpt: Sharpton and Trump forged
an unlikely friendship over Atlantic
City boxing deals that has lasted for decades, through
ups and downs. Even as the Tawana Brawley scandal unfolded and Sharpton faced a
67-count indictment involving how he used funding for his youth organization,
Trump remained a prominent supporter of the agitator, numerous sources close to
the two men tell National Review.

Excerpt: April 15, 2009 is largely seen as the birth date of
the Tea Party movement. Here’s what Trump was saying that day about President
Obama: TRUMP: I think he’s sort of a guy that just has a wonderful personality,
a good speaker, somebody that people trust. And I also think that the
comparison with his predecessor is so different -- it’s so huge that it really
has made a great impact on people. I think that he’s really doing a nice job in
terms of representation of this country. And he represents such a large part of
the country . . . I think he’s doing a really good job. Now, the sad part is
that he can’t just do a good job. He’s got to do a great job. Because if he
does a good job, that’s not good enough for this country. That’s how bad the
country has become. KING: Do you assess him as a champion? TRUMP: Oh, yes, he’s
a champion. I mean, he won against all odds. If you would have looked -- when
he first announced, people were giving him virtually no chance. And he’s just
done something that’s amazing. He’s totally a champion. (In the founding days of the Tea Party,
Donald Trump was exactly what they were fighting against . . . and now some of
those adherents have embraced him fully. --Jim Geraghty)

Excerpt: Real
estate billionaire Donald Trump gave Chicago mayoral candidate Rahm Emanuel
$50,000 in December 2010, just months before hinting to the media he
is seriously contemplating a bid to be the Republican Party's
2012 presidential nominee.

Excerpt: When host Jake Tapper asked Trump about Hillary
Clinton attending his wedding and his political contributions to Harry Reid and
Nancy Pelosi to help recapture Congress in 2006, Trump said, “We have gridlock
in Washington,
for instance I’ve helped Nancy Pelosi. I’ve helped Reid. I’m a business.” (Contributing
to candidates expecting some favor in return is considered a quid pro quo and
is illegal. ~Bob)

Excerpt: must confess that
I’m mystified as to why so many Republicans are utterly convinced that Donald
Trump will be a better president than Hillary Clinton. Trump, of course, makes
it easy for them to delude themselves, because each time he begins to sound
like Noam Chomsky, he’ll immediately pivot to mimic Rush Limbaugh, and he never
stops talking long enough to be pinned down. But which words matter? Which
words can we trust? The answer, of course, is none of them.

Excerpt: Donald Trump told Mark Halperin yesterday that his sister,
a federal judge, would be a “phenomenal” Supreme Court justice. He also said that “we will have to rule that out now, at
least.” If he ever becomes president, let’s hope he rules it out permanently.
Maryanne Trump Barry came up in my book The Party of Death for writing one of
those heated judicial decisions in favor of giving constitutional protection to
partial-birth abortion.

Excerpt: Outside of immigration, Donald Trump is a liberal.
Outside of immigration, Donald Trump is to the left of Jeb Bush, John Kasich,
and at times he’s even to the left of Hillary Clinton. Immigration is Donald
Trump’s Republican stance. On just about everything else, he’s running as a
democrat. His supporters don’t see it that way. They usually fall into one of
two camps: those who believe he’s a conservative because of his immigration
stance and those who are switching to his populist narrative and not worrying
about conservatism anymore. The first group gets something of a pass since
they’re simply being misled by Trump’s incredible sales pitch and his
unwillingness to offer details about his policies.

Donald Trump is not a
traditional Republican — including on some big issues

Excerpt: Saturday’s GOP debate
finally clarified the Donald Trump phenomenon. After months of dominating the
polls and millions of words of analysis, the grueling slog of the primary race
is finally bringing the facts into sharp relief. Donald Trump isn’t a
revolutionary. He’s not a conservative. He’s not even a populist. He’s a
Democrat.

Excerpt: “Of course [Donald Trump’s] not a conservative. He
was for Nancy Pelosi before he was against Nancy Pelosi . . . Celebrity is
everything in this country. If these guys don’t learn how to play the media the
way that Barack Obama played the media last election cycle, and the way Donald
Trump is playing the media this cycle, we’re probably going to get a celebrity
candidate.”

From Immigration To
Guns To Abortion, Donald Trump Must Reckon With His Progressive History. By
Eric Owens

Excerpt: With that failed presidential run and with public
appearances galore, Trump has established a sustained record of habitually
inconsistent political positions which clash dramatically with the current tide
of American conservatism. An in-depth study of Trump’s declared views on issues
ranging from immigration to abortion to taxes to socialized health care shows
that, in many ways, he would find a cozy home in progressive Democratic circles.
In the first of two installments, The Daily Caller focuses here on immigration,
abortion and gun control. Related: http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/26/from-high-taxes-to-socialized-health-care-donald-trump-must-reckon-with-his-rich-progressive-history/

Trump Once Said Of
Guns: “Nothing I Like Better Than Nobody Has Them.” And he slammed
Republicans for walking “the NRA line.”

Excerpt: A search of the New York state voter rolls shows that
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has never cast a vote in a
Republican presidential primary election in the state in which he has long
been a resident. Trump’s official voting records, obtained by the Daily Mail, show that the 69-year-old
billionaire failed to vote in any Republican presidential primary dating
back to 1989. ... Trump has changed his party affiliation at least four times
in the last 16 years — an average of once for each presidential election.

Excerpt: Since he jumped
self-confidently into the political limelight, Donald Trump has been quite the
upside-down man. Customarily, primary seasons permit each party’s voters to
indulge in a rational process of elimination: First, they discover which
candidate most closely agrees with them on policy, and then they ask themselves
whether that person is capable of representing their ideas in public. This time
around, however, this process has been disastrously inverted, a solid portion
of the Republican party’s balloters having decided first who they want to speak
on their behalf, and then, as if t’were a mere afterthought, wondered what he
might end up saying. That their pick lacks any sort of conservative message at
all does not seem to have mattered in the slightest. “We want that guy,” a host
of voters have determined. “Whatever he believes, he says it so well.”

Excerpt: Mr. Trump, I knew Ronald Reagan. And you’re no
Ronald Reagan! Of course, I am stealing that line — with a twist. Donald Trump
shouldn’t mind. He’s been stealing my dad for his own purposes. Trump
frequently invokes Ronald Reagan’s name to defend his sudden, 180-degree switch
from being a life-long, pro-Clinton Democrat to a Reagan Republican.

Excerpt: There’s many different ways, by the way.
Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say
because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t
afford private. But–” ... I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if
it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better
than they’re taken care of now. ... They’re going to be taken care of. I would
make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what,
if this is probably– ...the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to
save so much money on the other side. But for the most it’s going to be a
private plan and people are going to be able to go out and negotiate great
plans with lots of different competition with lots of competitors with great
companies and they can have their doctors, they can have plans, they can have
everything.

Excerpt: Scott Pelley: Universal
health care? Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care
if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better
than they’re taken care of now. Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it? Donald Trump: The government’s gonna pay
for it.

Excerpt: Unlike most of his fellow rivals for the Republican
presidential nomination, real estate mogul Donald Trump would not rescind
President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. “I’ve heard a lot of people
say, ‘We’re going to rip up the deal.’ It’s very tough to do when you say, ‘Rip
up a deal,’” Trump said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet The Press.”

Excerpt: Likely GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump said
Wednesday that he consults with himself on issues like foreign policy because
he has “a very good brain.”

Asked on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”
who he talks with “consistently” about foreign affairs, Mr. Trumpresponded, “I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I
have a very good brain and I’ve said a lot of things,” Politico reported.

Trump's Updated ISIS Plan: "Bomb The Shit Out Of Them," Send In
Exxon To Rebuild

Excerpt: Meanwhile, when Trump has weighed in on national
security questions, his remarks often reveal either ignorance or disdain for
military expertise and the codes of conduct that govern the armed forces. “I
know more about ISIS than the generals do.
Believe me,” he boasted in one speech, adding, "I’ve had a lot of wars of
my own. I’m really good at war." ... “He completely misunderstands the
military profession that he would head if he were the president,” said Robert
Killebrew, a retired colonel who served in the Army for more than 30 years.
Others were less polite. In a pair of ads produced by the American Future Fund,
a retired Special Forces commander named Michael Waltz calls Trump a
draft-dodger who “hasn’t served this country a day in his life,” and a Vietnam
veteran, Tom Hanton, says that Trump’s quip about POWs was “the most infuriating
comment I think I’ve heard from a politician in my entire life.” One former
Marine infantry officer described Trump to me as a “fake-bake-ing chicken hawk”
whose “knowledge of the Middle East could be trumped (sorry) by your average Georgetown sophomore.” Trump’s
chosen foreign policy advisers—which include a 2009 college graduate who touted
his experience in the Model U.N. on his online résumé and another who used
Kanye West lyrics to make arguments on his foreign policy blog—have only stoked
these anxieties. “Weirdo nobodies,” was how one military historian
characterized them to me. “They’re probably the least qualified group of
foreign policy and national security advisers I’ve ever seen or even heard of,”
said Richard Kohn, an expert in civil-military relations and retired professor
at the University
of North Carolina.

Military Strategist
Explains Why Donald Trump Leads—And How He Will Fail

Won't matter at all. His supporters don't care what he has
said or done in the past, they love what he said today. And if, as so often
happens, he says something different tomorrow, they love that too. After all,
"he tells it like it is" and that changed daily.

Excerpt: Here is one of Donald Trump’s spokesmen, Barry
Bennett, going on CNN to debate Donald Trump’s policies. Instead, what he says
is that Donald Trump is making suggestions. The spokesman says that Trump’s
proposals to ban Muslims and to build a wall are just suggestions, not really
proposals. In fact, the spokesman points out that Trump’s words don’t
matter. He actually admits this. “This words matter stuff is ridiculous.”

Excerpt: I would get people out and then have an expedited
way of getting them back into the country so they can be
legal. . . . A lot of these people are helping
us . . . and sometimes its jobs a citizen of the United States
doesn’t want to do. I want to move ’em out, and we’re going to move ’em back in
and let them be legal. (Also note that he buys the “jobs Americans won’t do”
justification for large-scale, low-skill immigration:)

Excerpt: That’s not the only area where the presumptive
Republican nominee sounds like Sanders, who is challenging Clinton for the Democratic nomination. On a
series of issues, including free trade and foreign military intervention, Trump
is effectively running to the left not only of his own party but also of Clinton. ... “NAFTA has
been one of the great economic disasters. Who signed it? Clinton. Clinton,”
Trump said Saturday at a rally in Lynden,
Wash. He was referring to the
North American Free Trade Agreement, which was actually signed by George H.W.
Bush but was implemented through legislation signed by Bill Clinton.

Excerpt: First, the U.S. has added 31 million payroll
jobs since 1994, or 29 million workers (depending on which methodology one
uses). Second, average hourly earnings, adjusting for inflation, are 43 percent
higher than in 1994. Third, U.S.
manufacturing output has reached record highs, and part of the reason is that
so much global trade consists of intermediate goods in fantastically efficient
supply chains. You may have read about Trump’s complaint that China is “killing us” because of bad trade
deals, but he also complains about Japan, one of our closest allies.
Trump seems unaware that the U.S.
has no trade deals at all with China;
nor does he seem to know that the Trans Pacific Partnership does not include China.
Trump is even questioning trade with our friends in Canada,
which is like complaining about jobs being “lost” to Oregon. Today, America
imports about $10 billion worth of goods from Japan every month, while exporting
$5 billion, yielding a 2-to-1 trade deficit in goods. So? As our patron saint,
Adam Smith, wrote centuries ago, “Nothing can be more absurd than this whole
doctrine of the balance of trade.” Has protectionism helped Tokyo? After decades of such trade
imbalances, America
has prospered while the Japanese economy has stagnated. Today, output per
person is 20 percent higher in the U.S.
than in Japan.

Tariff disaster
offers a lesson on the folly of protectionism. By Thomas Sowell

Excerpt: For a man who is running to “make America great again,” Donald
Trump’s tax plan is exceedingly expensive. According to an
analysis by the Tax Foundation, Trump’s plan would add trillions to the
national debt, more than the current sum added after seven years of President
Obama’s policies (via Weekly Standard):

Excerpt: Among Donald Trump’s more ridiculous statements
lately is his claim that should he win in November, he may attempt to pay down
the debt by printing more money. This may seem stunningly simplistic. But it’s
actually not. In fact, printing money, otherwise called monetizing or debasing
a currency, is an attempt to cure the ills of debt straight out of antiquity.
Unfortunately, history proves it’s been a poor effort at that. This is
ultimately an inflationary policy prescription: paying down the debt with
cheaper currency.

Trump Surrenders On
Minimum Wage; 'I Don't Know How You Live On $7.25 An Hour'

Excerpt: In an interview with left-wing CNN’s Wolf Blitzer
last week, Trump expressed openness to federal mandates to raise the existing
minimum wage. In earlier debates with his former Republican competitors for the
GOP’s presidential nomination, Trump expressed resistance to such proposals.

Stephanopoulos Calls
Trump Out for Backtracking on Tax Plan, Minimum Wage Position He Presented in
the Primary

Excerpt: It should be obvious to all by now that Donald
Trump knows nothing of what he speaks. His disastrous economic ideas are but
the latest in a litany of nonsensical proposals. Yet, and still, his supporters
— that Republican base so carefully nurtured by the very GOP operatives and
politicians who now find its members so distasteful — proclaim his supremacy
with such bracing observations as, “Well, at least he’s got [spheres],” or “At
least he speaks his mind,” or “At least he doesn’t suck up to anybody.” These
selections from the morning mail share a common element — “at least” — which
seems apt enough, though “the least” seems more to the point. Trump was the
least of so many other Republican candidates who offered governing experience,
knowledge and even, in some cases, wisdom.

Excerpt: Casino mogul Phil Ruffin, a longtime friend and
business partner of Donald Trump, gave $1 million last year to a super PAC
supporting the real estate tycoon's presidential run, just two weeks after the
group was formed. The seven-figure contribution from Ruffin, who owns the
Treasure Island Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, made up the bulk of the $1.74
million that the Make America Great Again PAC raised before shutting down,
according to new documents filed Wednesday with the Federal
Election Commission. The super PAC closed up shop in October after The Washington
Post reported on multiple ties between the organization and
Trump's official campaign.

Excerpt: “By
self-funding my campaign, I am not controlled by my donors, special interests
or lobbyists. I am only working for the people of the U.S.!” When asked by MSNBC’s
Joe Scarborough whether he would “change possibly … and start taking money in
the future,” Trump said, “No, no.” But we already knew that because of all
those self-funding quotes. Nevertheless, he’s now hired a hedge fund manager as
his national finance chairman and started scheduling fund-raisers. He’s working
out an arrangement with the Republican Party that will allow him to accept
megadonations. Presumably from people who have no special interests whatsoever
but just happen to have $300,000 on hand.

Excerpt: This most recent distraction — the revelation that
Trump impersonated his own, imaginary publicists on the phone for several years
in the 1980s and ’90s, confessed to it then, and denies it now — freshly
illustrates his well-established flair for drama and deception. It also
ratchets up a little the Fremdscham that he stirs in those who, as Rachel Lu
put it the other day, “remain un-hypnotized” by his antics: They feel his
embarrassment, and all the more so because he does not, or pretends he doesn’t.
Instead of correcting course, he doubles down and rubs the public’s nose in it.
... Carswell suggests that we keep our eye on Trump’s failure to release his
returns. Others, including Paul Krugman, suspect that the reason he’s
stonewalling is that the returns show him to be poorer than he lets on. In his
book TrumpNation (2005), Timothy L. O’Brien wrote that “three people with
direct knowledge” of Trump’s finances estimated that his net worth was between
$150 and $250 million. Trump sued O’Brien for defamation, insisting that he was
a billionaire, and lost in court.

Excerpt: On the heels of recent calls for Donald Trump to
release his tax returns, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee is
standing firm in his position that he would not make the documents public
before an IRS audit is complete. ... While every presidential nominee since
1976 has released their tax returns, Trump said that before 1976, it was a
"secret thing." (Of course, no one knows except Trump and the IRS -
which can't say - if he is really being audited. He has lied about this issue
in the past. ~Bob)

Trump’s false claim
that ‘there’s nothing to learn’ from his tax returns

Excerpt: Mitt Romney — the 2012 presidential nominee who
released his returns after Mr. Trump and others demanded it — points out how
little data exists with which to gauge Mr. Trump’s fitness for office. Mr.
Trump has no record of military service. He has never held elected office. Born
wealthy, he took over his father’s business and built a spotty track record.
Disclosing his returns might enable Mr. Trump to support one of his main claims
on the presidency: that he’s a negotiator so skilled it has made him a
billionaire. ... Mr. Trump now says he won’t release his returns because he’s
being audited. Such concern didn’t stop President Nixon from releasing several
years of returns in 1973 — even though the Internal Revenue Service
subsequently determined that the president owed nearly $500,000 in back taxes.
(Mr. Nixon’s famous comment, “I’m not a crook,” didn’t refer to Watergate, but
to rumors about tax avoidance, which turned out to be accurate.)

Excerpt: Hours later, he told Fox News host Greta Van
Susteren that he’d “like” to release his returns before the election, but can’t
because of an ongoing IRS audit. For the record, that’s a bogus claim that no
self-respecting reporter should allow Trump to get away with making,
since the
IRS itself debunked it in an on-the-record statement back in February.

21.No one knows where Trump stands on
Transgender use of bathrooms. Including Trump.

Excerpt: His comments on Friday were slightly different than
they were during an April town hall on the "Today" show, when he
commented that when it comes to North
Carolina's bathroom law, he would have left things as they were, rather
than pass a law requiring that people use bathrooms based on the sex listed on
their birth certificates, because "there have been very few complaints the
way it is."

Excerpt: "It's a new issue and right now I just don't
have an opinion. like to see the states make that decision," he said in a
phone interview on Fox and Friends. Trump said last month that
he did not agree with North Carolina
passing a law stating that people must use the bathroom that corresponds to
their gender at birth

Excerpt: In Trump's beloved Kelo case, you may recall, the
thing called "economic development" didn't
actually lead to any, and the working-class homeowner really did love
the house that was bulldozed by the government at the behest of a
wealthy developer. Trump's endorsement of the Supreme Court's 5-4 expansion of
the constitutional phrase "public use" to include private development
is not surprising, given his line of work and prior
reliance on the goliath-vs.-David practice. And his assertion that conservatives
(let alone libertarians, or progressives like Bernie Sanders) just need the
subject "explained" better to them is not just condescending, it's
ignorant: Kelo sparked a widespread
public backlash, and its economic-development rationale has been massively
unpopular for a decade. For good reason.

Excerpt: But it's worth remembering that amid Trump's
flowery praise for his city, the real-estate mogul took advantage of
taxpayer-funds designed to help struggling small-business owners in Lower Manhattan affected by the attack.

The Supreme
Court Is Not a Sufficient Reason to Vote for Trump. By Ian Tuttle

4 comments:

If Trump wins, it will just prove that none of that mattered. People want to send a VERY CLEAR MESSAGE to Washington and The Establishment of both parties... they just want CHANGE... they want them raccoons to be GONE!!!

There is no lesser of these two evils! By Robert A. Hallhttp://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2016/06/there-is-no-lesser-of-these-two-evils.html

People continue to attack me because I will not vote for either Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton. One recently said that was half a vote for Trump! (Why not half a vote for Clinton?)

People are saying that by not voting for Trump, I'm handing the election to Clinton. (So I guess that by not voting for Clinton, I'm handing the election to Trump?) When they dropped out, Rubio was doing 16 points better, Kasich was doing about 8 points better, and Cruz was doing about 8 points better against Clinton than Trump. In my view, if anyone handed the election to Clinton, it was the Trump primary voters who insisted on supporting him despite these numbers. Especially as we told them that principled conservatives could not vote for him. We were telling the truth, something that must come as a shock as their candidate lies to them so often. Apparently they thought we were lying too.

I believe in voting for the lesser of two evils, I really do, because the alternative is to be governed by the great of two evils. But in the case of Trump versus Clinton, I cannot discern which is the lesser of two evils. Both are, I believe, evil beyond my ability to discern nuances. Both Trump and Clinton have spent their careers in self-enrichment and rent-seeking. Both are proven and inveterate liars. Both are odious people with meretricious characters that I have despised for decades. Both are deeply flawed morally. Clinton has a sense of entitlement to rival a black hole. Trump has such a virulent cast of narcissistic personality disorder as to make Obama look self-effacing. Both are life long liberals, though Trump has started talking like the liberals' caricature of a conservative since he announced. But I ask you, is it more likely that a person tells you his true views when he is running for office, or when he's not.

If its true that we know how bad Hillary will be, moving the country further towards to coming fiscal, economic, social and political collapse in her pursuit of power and vast wealth, it is also true that, with his vast ignorance on every subject a president needs to know about, his childish bullying and fits of spite, no one knows what Trump may do or say on any given day. Least of all Trump. I cannot use my vote to make either of these people President when I don't believe either is fit to be the Flint Water Commissioner.

My essay, "22 Reasons Principled Conservatives can Never Vote for Donald Trump." http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2016/05/22-reasons-principled-conservatives.htmlCould as easily be written about Hillary Clinton. There is plenty of material there.

But I console myself with the knowledge that I'm 70, not that well, and that "It doesn't matter who you vote for in November"http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2016/05/it-doesnt-matter-who-you-vote-for-in.html